INTEGRATING HYDROLOGY AND GEOPHYSICS INTO A TRADITIONAL GEOLOGY FIELD COURSE: THE USE OF ADVANCED PROJECT OPTIONS

Incorporating increasingly multidisciplinary aspects of geoscience curricula into a traditional geology field camp requires compromises. Among these, decisions about projects to reduce or eliminate and course prerequisites are two of the most challenging. Over the past ten years, the University of Missouri’s geology field camp has completed a two-stage plan to expand our projects in hydrology and geophysics while maintaining traditional aspects of our course and our standard prerequisites. The first stage added projects in surface and groundwater hydrology, seismic refraction, and surficial mapping during the fifth week of our six-week course – replacing an existing mapping project. The second stage added advanced project options that students can select to complete during the last week of the course. Advanced projects in hydrology, geophysics, were added as alternatives to the existing hard-rock structural analysis project that had been the sixth-week project for all students. This staged addition has allowed us to: 1) integrate these projects into a curriculum that maintains a strong emphasis on historical bedrock geology, geologic mapping, and three-dimensional visualization; and 2) accommodate differences in the coursework that students have completed prior to beginning the field camp. Rather than requiring that students have prerequisite courses in hydrogeology or geophysics in order to select these advanced project options, we include sufficient instruction during the fifth and sixth weeks that builds upon previous projects to provide the required background.

To provide the context for our expanded hydrology and geophysics projects, we briefly describe our traditional field projects and our instructional philosophies. We describe the expanded projects that have been implemented during the fifth and sixth week of our course, project objectives, and how these projects reinforce lessons learned during our traditional field projects.